Reference no: EM133248890

Assignment:

Probability of a database match

Background:

Link to Thompson, William C. "THE POTENTIAL FOR ERROR IN FORENSIC DNA TESTING." GeneWatch. Council for Responsible Genetics, n.d. Web. 23 Sept. 2013:

Consider this quote from the Thompson article on page 10):

"Consider that among the 6 billion or so people on planet earth we would expect about 600 to have the one-in-10-million DNA profile; among the 300 million or so in the United States we would expect to find about 30 people with the profile. How certain can we be that the one matching profile identified in a database search is really that of the person who committed the crime?"

The authors are questioning whether or not the odds presented are enough to be confident that the suspected match really committed the crime. And this gets even more complicated in samples where there are mixtures of two or more individuals DNA in an evidence sample, such as is common in rape investigations. In this situation, analysts must try to sort out the victim from the assailant's DNA in order to use it to create probabilities of a match with a suspect. In recent years, the statistical models that have been used to parse out the DNA mixtures have come under fire as being faulty, yet have been used in court for thousands of cases.

Refer to the article below, and answer the question.

Question

While statistical calculations of probability are incredibly important component of investigations, they are not error-free. Drawing on the examples from the Thompson article as well as the faulty statistical models used in courts, discuss how the U.S. is addressing these issues and how they might be regulated, and what is at stake if forensic science techniques are not properly vetted.